


Rooftop Sonata in C Major

by engagemythrusters



Series: Six Pieces [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 01:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21384199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engagemythrusters/pseuds/engagemythrusters
Summary: Ianto reflects on life with the help of a cigarette, a rooftop, and some classical music, andwithoutthe help of one Jack Harkness.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Series: Six Pieces [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1697989
Comments: 9
Kudos: 127





	Rooftop Sonata in C Major

Just so that he doesn't feel like his father when he's having a smoke, Ianto usually plays classical music in the background.

He didn't always. Back when he was seventeen and chain-smoking, he had put on heavy metal or whatever his mates listened to, because that was _cool_. But then he got older and realised he didn't want to be like his dad, and that had stopped, all the smoking and the listening to heavy metal and the attempting to be cool. Instead, he just focused on trying to "be better" and "get a life." Then he had ended up in Torchwood and realised "getting a life" meant certain death in three to five years, so he quit quitting. 

Lisa had made fun of him, standing on their little balcony as _Eine kleine Nachtmusik_ flitted around in the background. 

"Acting posh doesn't make smoking posh, you know," she had told him.

"No, but it makes it feel a little less dirty."

"Hmm," she had said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. 

Then she had taken the cigarette from his fingers and taken a drag, blowing the smoke out with divine lips. 

In the now, Ianto takes in a violent inhale and coughs. Oops. Best not to get sucked into the past when already sucking in smoke. 

With a sigh that spews smoke everywhere, he leans forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the roof. He looks down at the ground below, then decides, nope. Looking down is not an option. Heights disagree with him.

He takes another drag, holding it and releasing it at a big hit in Beethoven's Fifth. 

"'Less dirty,'" he scoffs. "God."

Sometimes, he wants to go back and punch his younger self in the face. Or scream at himself to do better than that, to _be more_ than that. Should've kissed Lisa that night. Should've fucked her into the mattress. Should've said he loved her. Should've proposed. 

Nope. All he had done was smoked with her, out on their balcony, listening to horrid Mozart music as the city slugged slowly onward below.

And then they had nearly died in the smoke of Torchwood One the next morning. 

"Christ," Ianto says before inhaling more nicotine.

He bows his head low, letting it hang between his arms as he presses his elbows down on the edge of the roof, trying to ground himself into some reality. Even a reality as fucked up as this one is better than the messed up, well, _mess_ in his head. He sighs again and smoke curls out of his mouth. 

What a fucking nightmare.

When Ianto had taken Lisa to Cardiff, he hadn't smoked at all. He couldn't, because the respirator Lisa needed to breathe couldn't handle the smoke. But once he had successfully smuggled her to the Archives, Ianto had picked up his smoking again, so much so that he was smoking almost as much as he had when he was a wayward teen. It was something to keep his mind off of things, something he could blame the constant shaking of his hands on (well, other than caffeine). After Lisa had... _gone,_ he had smoked nearly a pack a day, just because he had nothing else to do and because everything in his head... it was too much. Way, way too much. A few times, he had put out his cigarette on his own skin because the nicotine wasn't doing its job and his head was burning like fire and he just needed it all to _stop,_ so he had made himself feel something tangible, something _real._

Well, it was certainly real, alright. It hurt like shit and left three small circles just below his left wrist to prove as much. 

He stands up again, bringing the cigarette to his lips once more. 

"Fucking... _fuck,"_ he mumbles inarticulately, the smoke puffing out with each syllable. 

The music had switched from Beethoven's Fifth to some other piece he didn't know. Some stupid sonata of some sort. Goddamn classical music. Goddamn Lisa. 

He finds himself smoking in time to the music, inhaling at the start of the phrase and exhaling at the end. It's... not therapeutic, exactly, but it keeps his head together. If he just focuses on the music, he can't think about how much he misses Lisa and London and his life before it went to hell.

"I'm a little hurt that you're just fine on rooftops when you're smoking, but when you're with me, oh, no, it's all 'Jack, get down from there, you're gonna break your neck.'"

Ianto coughs as he chokes on the smoke in his lungs. He turns to glare at Jack with watery eyes, because what the _fuck? _

"Those things are going to kill you," Jack says, slipping in beside him and gently rubbing his back as he coughs up more smoke. 

Ianto just glares at him a little more before taking another drag of the cigarette. 

"Really, though," Jack says, eyeing the cigarette with distaste. "Makes a guy feel a little hurt, when you prefer a rooftop with a cigarette to a rooftop with him."

"'s 'cause you get close to the edge," Ianto snaps. "I have to mop up after you when you fall, you know."

_I have to watch you die, over and over again_ remains unsaid. 

"I won't fall. I'm careful."

Ianto huffs out a laugh of smoke and anger. 

"Careful, my arse," Ianto mutters under his breath.

"Seriously, you have to stop that," Jack says, snatching the cigarette from between Ianto's fingers. 

He doesn't take a drag from it, like Lisa did, and Ianto can't decide if he's disappointed by that or not. He's certainly disappointed when Jack kills the cigarette under his boot. What a waste. Ianto reaches in his pocket of his dressing gown for another one. Jack nabs it from his hands before he can get the lighter to light it, then pulls the pack from Ianto's pocket so that he can't attempt to get another.

"Give them back."

"No," Jack says, stuffing the box into his own pocket of his greatcoat.

"Jack."

"Ianto," Jack replies calmly.

"Please."

"No."

Ianto's hands curl into fists as he shuts his eyes tight and sighs, turning away from Jack. 

Sometimes, he can make it by without a smoke. Sometimes, just Jack and a good shag is enough to get him by. Not tonight, though, evidently. He tried it, earlier, then had gone to bed and woken up with a nightmare, so he wound up here, on the roof, with a cigarette in his hand and the cold bite of the roof eating away at his bare feet. If he wants a distraction, it needs to be a distraction that isn't also the problem. 

"Mozart sucked," Jack says abruptly. 

The absurdity of the statement is enough for Ianto to open his eyes and frown at Jack.

"He was a spoiled little brat," Jack continues. "I mean, his music is good and all, but..." 

He shakes his head at the small radio Ianto had pulled from his wardrobe to bring up here.

"Annoyed me to no end," he finishes with a shrug.

Ianto rolls his eyes. "I know for a fact that you landed on Earth well after Mozart died."

"You forget," Jack says, pointing at himself. "Time Agent. Met him on assignment."

Ianto studies him for a moment, sighs, and turns away. Time Agent. Yeah. Whatever. 

"Hey," Jack says gently.

He reaches out to Ianto, and Ianto flinches from his touch. Out of the corner of his eye, Ianto sees the hand hesitate and draw back again, but Ianto doesn't turn back to see the look on Jack's face. If he does, he'll try to fix the sadness that lies there, like he always does, and then they'll just end up on the rooftop again some later time with the same problem. 

Jack leans on the ledge just as Ianto had been before he arrived. Still not turning to face him, Ianto watches him as he fiddles with the cigarettes he pulled back out from his pocket. Ianto is tempted to nick one back while Jack is distracted, but that won't end well. So, instead, he just stands and waits as Jack plays with the cigarettes that Ianto desperately wants to smoke.

"I don't get why you carelessly throw your life away to these," Jack says after a while.

Ianto can't help it. He bursts out laughing, humourless and scornful. Jack frowns at him as he cackles mirthlessly, still holding those goddamn cigarettes as if _that_ is the real problem Ianto has.

"What?" he asks when Ianto's laughter tapers off.

_"I_ carelessly throw my life away?" Ianto asks sharply, all traces of irony gone now, leaving only anger.

"Yes!" Jack says. "All those warnings, all those studies, and you still inhale these like you'll find the meaning of life at the end of them. Spoiler: you won't."

Ianto just shakes his head, turning back away.

"No, no," Jack says, a stern hand to Ianto's shoulder spinning him back around. "You don't get to brush this off. Do you even _care_ about your life?"

"Of course I bloody do," Ianto snaps. "Why the hell wouldn't I?"

"Because you keep—"

"We both know this job is going to kill me well before cigarettes can." He shakes his head again and adds under his breath: "And if anyone doesn't care about their life, it's you."

Jack pulls his hand back as if Ianto's shoulder burned him, staring at Ianto in shock. 

"What makes you think that?" Jack asks.

"Oh, please," Ianto scoffs. "You can't play the fool now, not with this."

"Well, I can if I don't know what you're talking about," Jack says, folding his arms in his supposedly intimidating manner. 

"Right."

"Ianto, if you've got something to say, just say it."

"Okay," Ianto says, confidence (or possibly rage) growing. "Okay. I do have something to say. And what I have to say is: stop getting yourself bloody killed just because you're sad."

Jack stares at him for a full minute. Ianto knows it's a minute, because he counts the seconds out in his head. One watermelon, two watermelon, three watermelon...

_"What?"_ Jack asks.

"You heard me," Ianto says. 

"Yes, I did," Jack says, sounding almost as angry as Ianto feels. "And now you're going to explain to me what I heard."

"Oh, come on, Jack!" Ianto shouts. "You can't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about! Every day this week, you've thrown yourself at... at _everything!_ Not once did you stop and think, 'oh, is this something I _need_ to sacrifice myself for?' No! You just went and bloody offed yourself!"

"I was keeping you safe!" Jack yells back. "That Weevil was going to come and rip you to—"

"I didn't need your help! I have a gun! I know how to use it! I'm trained to deal with Weevils! There was no need—no, Jack," he says when Jack opens his mouth to protest, "Absolutely _no need_ to jump in front of it and sacrifice yourself like a goddamn hero. I don't need you to sacrifice yourself for me! I don't need you to die in front of me, your body... in my arms... and... your blood..."

Ianto has to grab the ledge and squeeze his eyes shut as he gasps for breath. 

When he isn't eating and sleeping right, it all gets worse at night. He's not suicidal, not since his month of seclusion, but sometimes the entire thing comes rushing back to him. Blood and the charred, burning flesh and the screams and _Lisa_ and _"delete"_ and _"exterminate"_ and... and _Jack..._ lying on the ground, dead eyes and dead body and no breath and blood all over Ianto's hands, Ianto's suit, Ianto's soul. Sometimes he can't tell which was London and which is Jack, because it doesn't matter which was then and which is now. It's all the same in his nightmares; it's all just death and blood and bodies of the people he loves and. It. _Hurts._

It's why he has a smoke: to get the taste of _their_ ashes out of his mouth, to get the smell of blood from his nose, to get their screams from his ears, to keep him breathing in and out, to keep him sane. 

"Hey," Jack's voice says as Ianto runs his shaky hands through his hair and presses the pads of his fingers into his skull as he tries to tether himself to reality.

He feels Jack's body envelop around him and he sobs and sobs and feels himself come undone as everything slips away from him but this: the way everything hurts so badly and the way Jack's body feels around him.

It takes a good while for him to calm down. When he does, he sniffs and stands and tries to extract himself from Jack's embrace, to cling to some semblance of being a twenty-five-year-old man instead of a teenage girl, but Jack doesn't let go. He straightens as Ianto does, but he still holds tight to Ianto, cradling a soft hand to the nape of Ianto's neck, stroking the other gently down Ianto's back.

"I'm sorry," Jack says eventually. "I didn't mean to make you feel like—"

He cuts off, shaking his head, and Ianto feels some hair brush against his face.

"I didn't know," Jack tries again. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Ianto says, his voice muffled in Jack's coat. (If Ianto was of clearer mind in the moment, he would be wondering why Jack is wearing the coat and not clothes, because Jack is very obviously naked underneath it.) "Just stop doing it."

"I can't promise that," Jack says.

Ianto tries to pull back from Jack's embrace. Jack allows it, slackening his grip but still keeping his hands in a gentle hold on Ianto's body as Ianto frowns at him.

"I can't," Jack says. "I'm going to die again, and again, and again, and there's nothing neither you nor I, nor anyone else, can do to stop it. But..."

He cuts off with a sigh, moving the hand from Ianto's neck to his cheek, stroking a thumb over the tear-stained cheekbone. 

"I know I've been dying a lot lately," he says slowly, his eyes not meeting Ianto's, merely following the movements of his thumb. "It's been... well, it's been rough."

Ianto, though feeling a bit awful, can still scrounge up enough sass to roll his eyes, because he _knows that._ Wherever Jack went during those missing months (missing year, Jack had once let slip), whatever had been done to him, it is still eating Jack alive. But he doesn't understand why needlessly sacrificing himself for his team, his trained team, his trained team _that he himself trained_, can take care of themselves. 

Jack seems to see the look Ianto gives him, because then he says: "I know you can take care of yourselves. I know that. That's not why I'm stepping in the way. I just—"

The hand on Ianto's back leaves to join the other on Ianto's cheek, and now Jack is framing Ianto's face and looking at him with reverence that has Ianto mentally reeling backwards, because what the hell is that for? What's with this? What _is_ this?

"I want you safe," Jack tells Ianto (without _telling_ Ianto, because he still refuses to look him in the eye). "And maybe that means I make stupid choices with my own life. I can't promise that I'll stop instantly, or change my ways, but I _can_ promise that I'll try."

Ianto nods. He's not sure what else to do but nod and look at the expression on Jack's face, which still terrifies him because, oh, god, that's the way Lisa looked at him sometimes and that _scares_ him.

"But you have to promise me you'll try, too," Jack says.

"What?" Ianto asks, because he's sort of lost where this was coming from.

"I don't care that you don't think you're going to live long enough to get lung cancer. Well, no." He frowns at... Ianto's nose? Mouth? Either way, still not his eyes. "I do care that you think that, because putting yourself into a self-fulfilling prophecy is not okay. I want you to believe you're going to make it out of this alive, but that's not the issue, here. Right now, I just want you to take care of yourself and _stop smoking on the roof in the middle of the goddamn night._"

Ianto scowls at him. 

"While that's nice of you," Ianto says, his tone dry, "I don't know what you want me to do instead. It's not like I'm here because I _like_ being here, Jack. I'm here so I don't—"

He takes a sharp breath in instead of saying "do something stupid."

"Talk to Owen," Jack says.

Ianto snorts. "No fucking way."

"No, seriously," Jack says sternly. "I don't get whatever posturing the two of you have going on—"

(Which is a bit rich, coming from Jack and the posturing he just did with Rhys in the middle of the Hub not less than two weeks ago.)

"—but the two of you can set it aside for now while you figure out a _healthy_ coping strategy," Jack says. "Maybe talk about some SSRIs."

Ianto frowns and says nothing. 

"Just... please," Jack whispers. "Please, please. Take care of yourself. Please. I promise I will try to take care of myself, too, but I can't... if you're not around, there's not much of a point for me, is there?"

Ianto's eyes go wide, because what the _fuck_ does _that_ mean? But Jack's mouth closes around his in the gentlest kiss in the history of gentlest kisses, so Ianto's brain skips forward to analyse that, instead. 

Jack pulls back and drops his hands from Ianto's face. Ianto momentarily mourns the warmth and comfort, but then Jack's hands take his and pull him back to the stairs.

"Come on," Jack says. "Your breath stinks. You're going to go brush your teeth, and then we're going to go to bed, and I'm going to sit you and Owen down in the morning, and all will be okay."

Ianto, still drawn in by whatever the hell that was five seconds ago, lets Jack lead him back down to his flat. 

The radio stays on the rooftop ledge where Ianto forgets it, playing its sonata to its sole audience member: a pack of cigarettes. 

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, wow. This went places. Not sure where those places are, but it went there.  
As I also dislike Mozart, Sonata in C Major was _not_ actually used to inspire this work.  
Anyway, have a nice day! Thanks for reading!  
Edit: There are now follow-ups to this fic--[Fugue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22483576%22), and then [Cantabile](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22985779). Anyway, still hope you're having a nice day!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Rooftop Sonata in C Major [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23384455) by [Jackdaw816](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackdaw816/pseuds/Jackdaw816)


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